History
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a huge wave of immigrants came from Southern Italy and moved to East Harlem. Most were concentrated in the area east of Lexington Avenue between 96th and 116th Streets and east of Madison Avenue between 116th and 125th Streets. Italian Harlem approached its peak in the 1930s, with over 100,000 Italian-Americans living in its crowded, run-down apartment buildings. Each street had Italians from different regions of Italy, consisting mainly of Sicilians, a broad mixture of other Southern Italians, and a moderate number of Northern Italians. There were many crime syndicates in Italian Harlem from the early Black Hand to the bigger and more organized Italian gangs that formed the Italian-American Mafia. Italian American actor Al Pacino was born in Italian Harlem, moving to the Bronx at the age of two.
Among its most famous residents were Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New York from 1934 to 1946. In the 1950s and 1960s, large sections of Italian Harlem were leveled for urban renewal projects. The neighborhood retained a large Italian presence through the 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Italian Harlem
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)